What does it take to make 20k mile oil?

valhalla360 wrote:


I think you are way behind the times. Most new vehicles are in the 7-15k range for manufacturers recommendations. A lot of new vehicles actually track usage patterns and adjust the recommendation based on that.

It's been years since manufacturers have recommended 3k between oil changes.

The problem is taking it beyond 20k for other than high mileage commercial fleets quickly runs up against the law of diminishing returns.

Example: You have a new $50k diesel pickup and will sell it at 150k miles.
- If you use 10k intervals, that's $50k plus $1500 (at $100each) for oil changes for a total of $51.5k.
- If you go to 20k intervals, it's $50.75k...or a 1.4% savings. Of course if anything goes wrong due to the longer interval, you likely lost far more than the 1.4% savings and those issues are most likely to happen post warranty and even if during the warranty, if they can show you didn't follow the recommended schedule (many track oil changes), they can deny the warranty (often even if not really related to oil changes).

Even worse for gas pickups as I still usually get oil changes for $20-30 each but a new gas pickup is often in the $30k range. Saving 7 oil changes at $30, is only $210 over a similar time frame.

I know full well what current vehicles state and how "smart" oil life monitoring systems work. I made my statement on what people that I know normally do based on their perception, not what they should do per their owners manual. These are two different thing in many regards.

Most people that I know(and many here) think it is "cheap insurance" to change their oil every 3k or 5k miles regardless what what the manual or oil life monitor states. Why? Because they don't know any better and feel safe at these numbers which is why I posted this info to inform them that they can go longer with a lot of research and development behind why they can go longer, not just marketing jargon. Again, it does't matter what the manual or monitor states in the real world, it is what people perceive as safe which could be backed up by actual data or in many cases what they always done or have been told.

As I stated above, this mainly benefits fleets that not only pay for the oil change but also lose in downtime and paying the employee to sit and wait for an oil change. Int the case of my company, it costs a lot for a service foreman that gets paid $40+ and hour to sit and wait for an oil change for and hour or two. We also hove to compensate our serviceability to our customers for that hour. In the case of our deliver drivers, we have to make many adjustments just to schedule in an oil change for one driver.

Also as I stated above, the point of this post was not about going 20k miles between intervals. It is about giving people more insight as to how much research and development goes into making oil, and how it is not just marketing a new label on the same product which is what is perceived by many. Not sure if you actually watched it, but even the host of the video states that.